In America’s Empty Homes: The Overlooked Rural and Nonmetropolitan Housing Vacancy Problem , Gregory M. Fulkerson and Alex R. Thomas (both PLACES Institute, SUNY Oneonta) examine housing vacancy acro...

Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern shares this review of Climate Change: Agricultural Adaptation in an Age of Rural Polarization (Yale UP, 2026) by Margiana Petersen-Rockney, assistant professor in the Environme...

In Taxation, Redistribution, and the Urban-Rural Divide, author Kirk J. Stark (UCLA School of Law) considers how population density in urban and rural areas influences subnational and nation tax pol...

In Community Lawyering in Coal Country: Empowering Those Who Power America , Gregory Robertson (West Virginia Law) examines how social institutions have failed coal miners by systematically discourag...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In Preserving Rural School Districts from the Threat of Vouchers and Charters , Preston C. Green III (Urban Education and Educational Leadership and Law, University of Connecticut), Bruce D. Backer (...

In Empowering the Energy Transition in Rural Electric Cooperatives , Katrina Smith (Carolina Law), outlines the shortcomings of rural electric cooperatives and how they have transformed from their or...

In Rural Legal Markets , Elizabeth Chambliss (University of South Carolina School of Law) explores the realities of the current legal market of private practice in rural South Carolina. Using a mixed...

In A Tale of Two Landlords , Christopher J. Ryan Jr. (Maurer School of Law) explores the use of legal eviction from the landlord’s perspective, focusing on how costs impact landlords’ behaviors in th...

Grace Tracey reviews The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns And What it Means For Our Country by Professor Elizabeth Currid-Halkett of the University of Southern California Pric...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

This spring, the Rural Reconciliation Project convened an interdisciplinary workshop to explore how concentrated economic power shapes rural democracy: who gets to decide what, whose knowledge counts,...

In “Forgotten are the Locals: Structures of Common Differences and the Inauthentic Curation of Western Boom Town Main Streetscapes, ” author Matthew M. Mars (Public and Applied Humanities, University...

Why do so many rural residents oppose land and resource use projects, such as energy development? One commonality in each of these conflicts is the type of resource at issue – land and natural resour...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In Protecting Access to Nursing Home Care for Family Farmers , Natalie Temple (Gonzaga Law School) explores the challenges faced by American farmers facing retirement age and the need for care in nur...

In Rural Residency, Rural Resentment, and Attitudes Towards Public Land Management in the United States , authors B. Kal Munis and Zoe Nemerever (both Political Science, Auburn) explore attitudes reg...

‍By Erika Allen Wolters (Oregon State University) and ‍Kevin Pirch (Eastern Washington University).‍‍ ‍ As the United States expanded its territory into the American West, the federal government’s di...

In Justice on the Backroads: The TBA YLD’s Answer to the Rural Attorney Shortage , Hon. Zachary R. Walden (Criminal Court judge for Tennessee’s 8th Judicial District) and Alix Rogers (Belmont Unive...

In Collaborative Management on the Eastern Slopes: The Waldron Ranch Grazing Cooperative and Conservation Easement Motivations , Forrest Hisey (Geography, Geomatics, and Environment, University of To...

In Understanding Rural Legal Deserts to Inform Public Policy: Identifying and Describing Lawyer Gaps in Non-Metropolitan Counties , David J. Peters, Emma Bartling, and Emily Meyer (all Agricultural a...

I began my career as a legal aid attorney representing low-income survivors of violence in rural Kentucky. This experience led me to try to understand the impact of place on domestic violence protecti...

In The Geography of Property Rights: Land Concentration, Irrigation Access and Rural Poverty Under Climate Change in Chile , Eduardo Villavicencio-Pinto (Law, University of Kent, England) examines th...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In The Healing Power of Antitrust , Theodosia Stavroulaki (Saint Louis University School of Law) analyzes the effects of noncompete and merger agreements between rural hospitals, which lead to “hospi...

In Feed it to the Ocean: The Federal Approach to Decommissioning in Alaska Native Climate Adaptation Project , Sophia Tidler (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Law) highlights the importance of decommis...

In Catching Nutrients in a Net: Collective Action, Institutional Impediments, and the Mississippi River Watershed , Jonathan Rosenbloom (Albany Law School) investigates the role of local governments ...

In Know Your Rights! A Field Experiment on Legal Knowledge, Property Rights, and Investment in Kenya , Adam Aberra and Matthieu Chemin (both Economics, McGill University, Montreal) illustrate the imp...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In Legal Deserts and Spatial Injustice: A Study of Criminal Legal Systems in Rural Washington, authors Lisa R. Pruitt (University of California Davis Law), Jennifer Sherman, and Jennifer Schwartz (b...

Sarah Vogel reviews The Rural Lawyer: How to Incentivize Rural Law Practice and Help Small Communities Thrive by Professor Hannah Haksgaard of the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law. ...

In A World-Threatening Feeling: Grief, Moral Injury, and Institutional Loss in Rural Courts, author Michele Statz (Minnesota Medical School and Minnesota Law) examines how technologies first impleme...

In Rural Geography I: Why Should Rural Geographers ‘Care’? Susanne Stenbacka (Human Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden) explores the existing literature discussing the concept of care and its inte...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In Natural Resource Policy and Collaborative Processes , Crystal M. Callahan and Katherine M. Himes (both Public Policy Research, University of Idaho) advocate for introducing collaborative governanc...

Sarah Vogel’s The Farmer’s Lawyer: The North Dakota Nine and the Fight to Save the Family Farm covers litigation from the farm crisis of the 1980s. Vogel begins by declaring the book to be “a memoir...

In The Dark Side of the Balloon: Restrictions on Foreign Investment in US Farmland , Sarah Everhart (Delaware Law) argues that legislators should shift their focus from preventing foreign ownership o...

In Rural Politics in the United States , authors Trevor E. Brown and Suzanne Mettler (both Government, Cornell University) survey recent literature on rural politics and recommend a broader lens to b...

In Women smallholders build an agroecology food system: the construction of empowerment and food sovereignty , Chukwuma Ume, Ernst-August Nuppenau, Stéphanie Domptail (all Agricultural Policy and Mar...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In “ Provincial Diffusion, National Acceptance: The Transfer of Conservation Easement Policy in Canada , ” auth or Forrest Hisey (Geography, Geomatics, and Environment, University of Toronto) s...

A reading list of rural-related literature curated by the Rural Reconciliation Project. This collection explores how national mythmaking extracts and appropriates rural narratives for its own purposes...

IIn “ Neo-Rurals and Tourism in the Context of Rural Crisis in Southern Europe. Case Study in the Sierra de Aracena (Andalusia, Spain) ,” authors José Manuel Álvarez-Montoya and Esteban Ruiz-Ball...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

In “ Buying Time ,” aut hors Christ opher J. Ryan, Jr. (Indiana Law) and Cassie Chambers Armstrong (Louisville Law) set out to consider how both access to legal representation and extended lengt...

In Consuming Newton County: A Short History , Lisa R. Pruitt (University of California-Dav is Law) presents a history of economic evolution and the concomitant tensions between consumerism and con...

Designed to support the work of law professors, scholars, and students working on issues of law and rurality in the US, this guide organizes otherwise disparate rural materials by source type and offe...

A periodic collection of recent research, analysis, and other notable rural items.

The Rural Reconciliation Project and Professor Hannah Haksgaard of the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law co-hosted an online Law and Rurality Workshop in Fall 2025.

In “ Economic Development for Native Nevada: How Indian Gaming Can Further Tribal Self-Determination ,” aut hor Makai Zuniga (J.D. Candidate, Nevada, Las Vegas Law) examines the historical and o...